Dreams Unlimited – October 2010

Directors Cut: Recently, I visited a Life Skills through Football session and I was delighted to see that I could recognize many faces from the 1^st year of the program in 2007. For a brief moment, I was wondering what was it about the program that the children had continued to attend for nearly 4 years. I didn’t need to ask the children. As I watched the session in progress, I witnessed something magical. I witnessed sheer joy and happiness on the faces of the children. The sense of delight, those sparkling happy eyes, the energy, the pure innocence that is so much reflective of a normal childhood is what I experienced in that session and I had my answer. I am delighted to say that in the rigmarole of running a professional organization and focusing on aspects of delivery, scale, operations, impact, etc  we at Dream A Dream have not lost the essence of “Bringing more smiles and giving children the experience of childhood that is truly awesome!” The above experience makes it all the more enriching to share with you some of the other delights we have had in the last six months of the financial year 2010-11.

1. Total outreach of 2172 children in our Dream Life Skills Programs and we are on course to meet our Annual Target of reaching out to 3000 children by December 2010
2. We have 800 children in Football, 100 in Rugby, 850 in Creative Arts, 430 in LearnIT, 50 active relationships in Mentoring and over 326 children have participated in the Adventure camps this year.
3. Working with 11 Partner NGOs to reach out to the 2000-odd children. Our newest partner is the Vibhutipura School, Whitefield which has the largest number of children participating in our programs.
4. Launch of the DreamConnect Center, an exclusive technology and knowledge based learning space for youth graduating out of the Dream Life Skills Program and wanting to continue their learning cycle.
5. 80% attendance has been achieved on an average in all our Life Skills Programs
6. On an average 90% of the scheduled sessions have been conducted in the year so far

Our children have also begun to excel in the programs they have been participating in:

• Children from Annaswamy School participated at the Taluk Level Football Tournament.
• Mamtha T from The Round Table School represented Bangalore in the Women’s Rugby Tournament.
• 5 children from the Dream Rugby Program represented the Karnataka State in the Under 16 Category for the National Level Rugby Tournament and were placed 9^th in this tournament.
• Karthikeyan from Annaswamy School was selected to represent the state in the under 19 category rugby tournament.
• Mani from Annaswamy School played in a football tournament conducted in their residential area and won “The Top Scorer” award
• A couple of youth have been chosen by Hippocampus Reading Foundation to become Mobile Librarians in their local communities and another couple of youth have started volunteering at the LearnIT program to help younger children pick up Life Skills and Computer skills.

In addition, Our Volunteer Engagement continues to scale new heights

1. Number of active volunteers this year : 430
2. Number of volunteering hours clocked : 7006
3. Number of corporates who have participated in volunteering activities: 5. One corporate is handling an entire batch of LearnIT and another company has clocked over 1000 hours of volunteering in 6 months.
4. Number of international volunteers – 21 including 4 volunteers from College of Wooster, Ohio who did an Impact Assessment study for Dream A Dream and 1 volunteer from Stanford who did a Financial forecasting project and a Volunteer Impact Assessment Survey design.
5. Number of student interns: 6

Most importantly, volunteers continue to build a strong bond with children and go away becoming more sensitive human beings. “Satisfaction of a Saturday well spent. Spending time with these children, sharing their   energy and excitement, brought back fond memories of my childhood. I felt awful when I heard that this was their first visit to any museum, and wished that these children get more such opportunities to see and experience more places. First volunteering experience with Dream A Dream, and I must say I was impressed with their eye for detail.” -Jaysham Shetty, Dream A Dream Volunteer “Volunteering in the Mentoring programme has been an wholesome and an overwhelming experience. As an individual I have learnt to keep a restraint on not providing the fish to my mentee and teaching her to fish instead, not to judge and evaluate and have patience.  Seeing Saraswati's aspirations and not being disheartened in spite of rejections and tragedies in her life is very inspiring. I have found my purpose in life and thank God for providing me the opportunity to make a difference through Dream A Dream.” -Christine, Dream A Dream Volunteer The Organization also continues to make its presence felt at National and International levels

1. We were shortlisted as a Regional Winner (South) in the Medium Category at the India NGO of the Year Awards 2009-11.
2. We were runners-up at the Outstanding Annual Report awards 2008-09
3. Bhasker Sharma, an active volunteer and currently Board Member is a Finalist at the Global Volunteer of the Year Awards instituted by Resource Alliance. The results are awaited.
4. Dream A Dream was represented at InspireED (An Inspire Education Conference), Maidan Summit (A Sports for Development Conference) and at various other forums where our Life Skills work was represented and appreciated.

And all this is made possible by a really small team of 30 highly committed and passionate employees, 30 facilitators and coaches who are changing the way education is looked at in our Partner schools and led by a team of 6 highly professional Board Members. Here’s to another 6 months of bringing and sharing happiness into the lives of children. Vishal Talreja; Co-founder & Executive Director, Dream A Dream